Around the new millennium, movie masculinity began to take on a tenor that defied the idea that men could only sublimate emotion onscreen through violence and seduction. The films of Judd Apatow, and others that followed in his wake, put male friendship at centre stage. Nevertheless, it was usually much too much for anything so delicate as feelings to be discussed directly. In the first wave of onscreen bromances, any sort of emotional vulnerability still had to be carefully swaddled in a layer of jokes – even a film that was literally titled I Love You, Man. (“I love you, Bro Montana … Broseph Goebbels … Tycho Brohe.”)

In the 2020s, however, it seems the bromance has grown up. A trio of recent releases unapologetically focus on the therapeutic side of male bonding, no self-protective irony in sight. Call it non-toxic masculinity: men finding the language to express themselves in a way we haven’t seen much of at the movies – and which arguably we need now more than ever. Whether influenced by a sense of social purpose, or their screenwriters’ therapy sessions, these films all share a faith that the best way to bro out is to talk it out.

It’s clear why the men of Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing might seek a new mode of masculinity. They’re locked up together in a state penitentiary and, for some, it was the old mode that put them there. Redemption comes in the form of a prison theatre programme – based on a real organisation, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, whose graduates comprise much of the film’s cast – that affords them not just the opportunity for mental escape, but also a venue to relate to each other in a new way. The ensemble makes a point to call each other “beloved”, and through goofy theatre exercises and intimate discussions, they learn to relate to themselves differently, too.

The hardest man in the yard (Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, playing a version of himself) turns out to embody a soulful Hamlet, while the troupe’s unofficial leader, Divine G (Oscar nominee Colman Domingo), faces the fact that he’s been using his education and ambition to hold himself above his fellow inmates. The film is self-consciously pro-social, but any sense of Sing Sing as cinematic vegetables is undercut by its climactic performance – a silly time-travel comedy about mummies, Robin Hood and Freddy Krueger, which brings to mind Divine G’s earlier words about the importance of those acting exercises. “They’re goofy as fuck,” he tells a newcomer. “But there’s an intention to them: they help you find some depth.”

For the men of Sing Sing, the theatre troupe becomes a found family. Another recent Oscar-nominated film, A Real Pain, concerns the challenges that come with actual family. It follows a pair of cousins who attempt to reconnect with their roots, and each other, on a Holocaust tour of Poland. David (Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film) is high-strung and highly therapised. Benji (Kieran Culkin, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) is impossibly charming and charmingly impossible – a big, gushing wound who dominates every interaction. “I love him and I hate him and I wanna kill him and I wanna be him,” David tells his tourmates. (Benji, meanwhile, calls his cousin “an awesome guy stuck inside the body of somebody who's always running late”.)

Many of us in the audience may see ourselves in David. But while we could all stand to be a little more like Benji, Benji’s problem is that he is never not Benji. As the catharsis they thought they’d find in Poland eludes them, the cousins mend their relationship by realising they don’t need to solve each other. Over the course of long, difficult conversations, they learn to live in the contradictions.

The wet blanket/wildcard dynamic also gets a workout in this month’s Sacramento, a road movie about two old friends’ impromptu trip to the California state capital. It, too, is co-written and directed by one of its stars, Michael Angarano. Though, unlike Eisenberg, he gave himself the more fun part: Rickey, a motor-mouthed layabout who dreams of becoming a grief counsellor, opposite Michael Cera’s anxious dad-to-be Glenn.

The gag in Sacramento is that both guys are so proud of having done the appropriate emotional work that they each see themselves as the mature diagnostician in the relationship. What follows is a comedic ouroboros of projection, as each tries to get the upper hand by assessing the other’s hangups. (Or, as one notes, is that just called “gaslighting”?)

Sacramento hinges on whether two guys who know all the right words to say can actually put them into practice, a question ultimately answered by a form of exposure therapy. Only by staring down the abyss of disruptive change can these men find the vulnerability to let each other in. How fitting that one should be played by Cera, an actor who, half a lifetime ago in 2007’s Apatow-produced Superbad, struggled to say “I love you” to his best friend. “Why can’t we say it more often?” he asked back then. Now he can. And hopefully the audience watching on are finding it easier, too.